


Impressions from the North Tower

by Ruis



Category: Original Work
Genre: F/F, Fantasy, Historical Technology, Nonlinear Narrative, Science Fiction & Fantasy, Steampunk
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-20
Updated: 2019-08-20
Packaged: 2020-08-14 02:14:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,041
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20184562
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ruis/pseuds/Ruis
Summary: Behind her, the tower stood silent, a beautiful thing of clockwork and vines that had been hard to find and hard to enter, harder still to leave. Higher than the highest treetops the tower rose. It was part of another world, the elders had said, and princess Alys did not doubt their word, not after meeting the queen of that castle, the only inhabitant, timeless, ageless and entirely unforgettable.





	Impressions from the North Tower

**Author's Note:**

  * For [BatchSan](https://archiveofourown.org/users/BatchSan/gifts).

Behind her, the tower stood silent, a beautiful thing of clockwork and vines that had been hard to find and hard to enter, harder still to leave. Higher than the highest treetops the tower rose. It was part of another world, the elders had said, and princess Alys did not doubt their word, not after meeting the queen of that castle, the only inhabitant, timeless, ageless and entirely unforgettable. 

Visiting had taken more courage than Alys liked to admit even to herself. All the colors looked brighter now, the very air tasted differently after having tasting the queen’s lips. No, the world around her was not different from what she knew at all. She herself had changed. She was not sure she had become any wiser or stronger, but stepping into that tower had at least changed one thing for sure: she was not afraid anymore. 

Never before had the princess noticed how loud the forest really was. The rustling of wind in the leaves she only noticed consciously for the very first time after it had been absent during her stay in the tower. The hum of flies, usually so easily ignored, hit her as a wall of noise. She heard the call of a Gefr in the distance and the responding cry of its mate. High above her, on the roof of foliage, she could hear the first drops of the mid-day rain. 

If she listened very carefully, she imagined she could even hear the tower itself: a deep groan, slabs of that magical material the queen had called metal being strained by tree roots pushing their way through cracks. While most of the building was tarnished and overgrown with mosses and fern, the fresh sites of fracture were shiny. She could not imagine how this tower had ever been built. It should have been ticking, the gears moving, Alys knew. The queen had told her some of the tower’s secrets, and that, more than all the sweet words praising her beauty and loveliness, had convinced her there was a future for them. She was leaving now, Alys thought, but she would be back. On a cord around her neck, she wore the token of that promise.

\---

The first time, she had entered the castle bearing royal gifts: knives and arrowheads crafted from obsidian, seashells imported from the far shores of Waiyente presented on a pillow of finest dyed wool interwoven with the colorful feathers of Gefr birds, and rarest of all, a horn of the mythical Zaif no living soul had ever seen. She only knew the days when herds of one-horned animals walked the forest from her grandmother’s stories who had heard them from her own grandmother, could not imagine what those beasts would have looked like.

In the glorious days of old, Alys would have gone on that quest herself, would have hunted for the horn and presented it proudly with her head held high. However, the thing she had carried was old, faded and brittle, wrapped in an equally ancient piece of leather. It was sad, she thought, and she could not look the gift’s recipient in the eye. If she had, she might have seen the queen smile ever so slightly.

\---

After a seemingly infinite ascent, they stood on the top of the tower together. Alys was too out of breath to ask all the questions running through her mind, but she would have loved to ask about the way the stairs vibrated under her steps, or the vibrant paintings on the wall using more colors than coal and ochre. She would especially have loved to ask about that woven tapestry showing a lady looking suspiciously like the queen riding an animal with a single horn on its forehead. 

As it was, after she stumbled on the platform after the completely unfazed queen, Alys could only stare in silence. For a few disorienting moments, she did not truly realize the billowing green mass far below her was her home, the forest she knew so well. Above her was only blue infinity stretching into all directions. And there, a bright disk that must be the sun, for the first time viewed not through a thick layer of leaves. 

“Do not look directly into the sun”, the queen advised, laughing softly. “I know you are here for knowledge, my beautiful one. And you will have it. But knowledge is like sunlight, too much of it and you will go blind.” On the table in front of her lay charts with mysterious curves. In her hand, the queen held a strange device. With her other hand, she beckoned the princess closer. “Here, let me show you how to measure the sun’s height in the sky. I can show you how to divide time into hours, how to find your way by the sun and moon and stars. I will show you the stars tonight.” 

The queen’s smile at that was, Alys thought, more than just a bit sad. It took her a while to reply, and when she did, it was not much more than a whisper. “I will travel”, she said. “I will go far, beyond the forest, and I will let sun and moon and stars guide my way. And then I will come back and do much better than that.” She gently laid her hand on the queen’s arm, golden skin on pale. “I will free you from this tower.”

\---

She was still growing used to the weight around her neck even after months of traveling, and her fingers kept returning to the bronze astrolabe that had been a parting gift from her beautiful queen. Smiling, she oriented the alidade towards the sun and looked at the tiny fleck of light in her palm. The world was so much bigger than her forest, and Alys had never known before. Alys had loved the mountains where she had seen snow for the first time in her life, only regretting that she could not take it home as a gift. She had loved the ocean that was just as infinite as the sky she would never grow tired looking at. And yet she could not wait to return to that tower in the forest, quietly decaying.


End file.
